Write operation is not working on Files in Production Environment (Electron App)

Question

In our electron app, there is a need to update a file with user-entered data (Using node fs module to update the file). It works fine in Development environment, but not working in Production Environment. Do we need to take care of any additional settings somewhere in electron app environment to allow write operation on files? (Tried with XLSX and JSON files, both are giving same issues)

Note: File does exist in our project structure itself. Read operation is working fine though (in Production as well).

Edit: App is built using 'electron-builder' npm package.

Answer 1

Files should be written to app.getPath("userData") in an application. Stick this in your main.js file and check to see if this path is the one you are writing files to. This should work in any environment.

const { app } = require("electron");

console.log(app.getPath("userData"));

Answer 2

Since you are packaging your app into an ASAR file, you cannot write to these two locations. To prevent the app from tampering with its own source code, the archive is read-only.

Thus, either package your app into directories (which would leave your JavaScript source code readable for everyone) or move the files out of the application package. The most suitable place should be in the user's app data directory (like @reZach showed using app.getPath ("userData");) or right beside the executable.

That way, your files remain read- and writable when shipping the app.